After that CL embarrassment and many, many boring Liga games I'm at a point where I don't even care anymore if they win or lose the Copa. I'm just so fed up with Valverde and his complete lack of tactical knowledge. Whats his plan for tonight? "Lets just put twenty midfielders in there and leave Messi alone up front he'll just win it for us"

Tonight, Lionel Messi had a usage rate of 30.83% against Valencia. This means that 31% of Barcelona's possession ended with him.
This number is amongst the highest ever recorded since the metric has been in development.

It happens more often than people are comfortable with admitting. No one likes to accept that the sport they love so dearly is sometimes a scam. Soccer is probably second only to boxing in terms of fixed, or influenced results.

Marca also said that the Valladolid game vs Valencia is under suspicion as well. The clubs are not thought to be involved but rather the players.

They also said that the bets on the game were more plentiful than usual.

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Many people think that matchfixing is mostly at the hands of governing bodies (UEFAlona, UEFAdrid etc) but it’s almost always from the hands of the crooked portions of the gambling community.

The higher up in prestige that the league or tournament in question goes, the more difficult (and unlikely) the fix becomes but as Declan Hill did such a good job illustrating in his book ‘The Fix’, most often its lesser players involved (if not refs) in lesser tournaments. They’re often targeted as early as u17 tournaments before becoming established pros with threats to family and loved ones etc. And, often when they get you, it’s hard to get out from under their gangster grip. Stephen Appiah, who captained Ghana at the 2006 World Cup has spoken about this publicly and has even alluded to thinking (although even acknowledging that he couldn’t prove it) that members of his team sold a loss to Italy in that World Cup.